OR: HRANT MATEVOSYAN ON THE BRIDGE OF 60
There are people, they come and get stuck in your day, and you are no longer the owner of your day, there are people, they come and get stuck in your life and they become your master, moreover, they make you their master... And those people live with you, in you, regardless of whether they are far, near, familiar or unknown. They are, and without them you are not you anymore...
- Who do you think you are?
- That question was answered by my work and my critics. My definition of Hakob Mndzuru has been returned to me: "A lost apostle of the past in the cradle of today's civilization."
- Every era nominates its hero. What should the typical hero of the Armenian literature of the late 20th century look like?
- Considering the behavior of the established heroes of Armenian literature, we have had very little contact with the fields of great literature and we do not have a hero who is shaped accordingly. New times, demand for a new answer: Armenian literature rarely responds to the new times with its new characters. Perhaps the exact answer was given by the epic, by Little Clouds, and by referring to or repeating the epic, or finding the main point in time by their own searches, several writers were only able to relate to the new hero of the new times. Liquid times, elusive figure of the enemy, an unfolding tragedy, where neither the tragedy takes shape, neither the heroes get a name, neither the enemy gets a name, and the tragedy, however, turns sour. This must be opened, it must be written. After your question, I immediately remembered Kafka. I didn't remember Sholokhov, "Peaceful Don", which is a tragedy, a tragedy of time and individual, society, but Sholokhov was a part of the literature of the past half-century, let's say Tolstoy's literature. And after Tolstoy, a reality was formed in which the new tragedy was not at all like the old one... And our hands were tied with the shackles of deliberate, biased literature, and we were unable to really open time and characters, find the essential, shape the main thing. That mission of literature did not actually happen. The vast earth collapsed and there was nothing we could do to avoid destruction. That literature must be written.
- Literature was biased, but criticism was also biased.
- I take the phenomenon as a whole, if you like, including philosophy.
- In that case, we should deviate from literature to politics.
- Philosophy, literature and politics are the sons of ethics and reality, this has also been noticed.
- So in your opinion, what should be the motto of a man and an Armenian man at the end of the 20th century?
- There are things that I cannot understand.
- From a question or from a person?
- There is a provocative tone in the question to the extent that it has shaped the world literary thought and brought it to the public, and we, as is typical for the weak, fall into that formed current and get swept away. We cannot separate our situation and speak our word. The question is always asked like this: the person or the state, the society or the person, and we say first of all, of course, the person. In "The Copper Horseman", for example, of course, Eugene and not Peter. If the individual, let's unite with the whole society, with literary-historical-philosophical depth, let's engage in the cause of the destruction of the state. We took the yoke, we destroyed it - it was a destroyed homeland, as a result, every individual is destroyed.
- In fact, the Russian progressive democracy has been engaged in this very thing for almost 200 years: to destroy the state, starting with the Decembrists and ending with the modern Russian democrats.
- The question was put that way, but the state was still preserved.
- So how to explain that phenomenon?
- At the moment of responsibility, those aristocrats and democrats stood next to the state, not the person.
- Maybe it just meant standing next to a person through the state. After all, what is the state for? It wasn't just a whim of the tsars, it was a mechanism for keeping the country, the nation, the people.
- Before you came, I was thinking about Dostoevsky. "Demons". Here is the individual, and sympathy is on the side of the poor, the wretched, but here is the time of the rebels, terror is rampant, and sympathy turns to conservatism, the state.
- In your answer to the previous question, I was very interested in a fact that I have thought about a lot myself: the problem of Little Mher. Wasn't Little Mher the first manifestation of the retreat of our national gene, why did Agravakar go and enter, why didn't he think of keeping the land in some way? Why "The ground does not hold me?" I don't know why I associate the phenomenon of being closed in Agravakar with the loss of our statehood, etc., etc. However, why did our national hero choose the path of leaving, self-isolation, what was it, the unreality of the national dream? why exactly that unreal became our national ideal? In general, what is the Armenian phenomenon? What is it?
- After all, the Armenian national hero is David.
- But why didn't our national epic end with David? let it end with David, it ended with Mher, and Mher left. The most powerful in all cases was probably Mher, it is not always the smallest who is the strongest, the king's little boy.
- One should look at the epic with a critical eye. That moment is the genius guess, the genius guess of the people, which somehow relates to Eastern philosophy, world thought. I have never asked myself why the people, our mind or any thought had the desire to transform life, to go against God, nature, not to do, but to be. Davit was doing, Mher was doing. When answering this question, we should talk much more about insightful realism: the land is crippled, the heroes are small, even Kozbad is not there, there are Kozbad's grandsons, small heroes, small resources that constrain the giant, he is persecuted by these dwarfs.
- "The foundations of our life fell into the abyss?"
- It is there. Yes, that wonderful, magnificent poem is also an answer.
- Do you remember, don't you, the aras have become small, a smile is enough for the aras...
- "But there will be a night"... It is a deep, intelligent poem. Don Quixote ultimately lives the same story: his fantasies, his struggle, and his defeat. Hamlet is in the same dilemma.
- But Hamlet died, didn't he, and Mher left? Why did he leave?
- Isn't it the same? Answer yourself, what do I know?
- I want your answer. What excites and motivates here is not so much the epic moment as the relation to our time and the repetition of the behavior of Little Mher in our days, which makes the question relevant: why?
- I used to think a lot about Mher. Our social order, our triumphant, our fully manifested individual lives, echo Moses, not David. Once upon a time, I thought of writing "Mher" as a novel, I was attracted by both the story and the epic, the possibility of stylization. I was also thinking about Tumanyan, that it is the same Mher, he also entered the cave, Charents was also defeated.
- What was the defeat of Charents? Death?
- Death too.
... The other fields - not wet and dry,
And in the fields it - the gras-apin,
A rotten, muddy shirt,
The soul is always mute, silent...
- No, I think that Charents did not lose.
- Well, Tumanyan didn't lose either.
- Maybe Tumanyan's time to lose. Tumanyan's type.
- You seem to have corrected me with your question, in that case Charents's time was lost as well.
- Do you remember Charents' "Borderline of Two Worlds" - Avo from Gyumri, Ohanes from Loreti, Vahan from Akhalkalaki...
- It is, it is, but Charents' time was also lost.
- Which Charentsi? We have 3-4 Charents, which Charents?
- 18-23 years. Charents. "Hetshavarshyan" of Charents. If we say that it was not Tumanyan's defeat, it was the defeat of time, then Charents' time was also defeated.
- Okay, now I will ask a provocative, perhaps disrespectful question: who was the most Armenian among them? I understand that it is disrespectful to them, but by the standards of our time, who was more?
- They are so identical, so similar that I will not obey your provocation. They are so similar to each other: Khorenats, Epos, Narekats, that it is a separate conversation, Abovyan, Tumanyan, Saryan, Teryan, Aram Khachatryan, Arshil Gorky, William Saroyan... In different languages, in different fields of culture, they identify so much, they are so similar. The most Armenian Armenian comes from the union of that whole.
- Can you summarize the Armenian phenomenon in one sentence?
- At one time I could.
- Did the time change, did the Armenian change, or did you?
- All of us together. There were things I didn't want to see, just like you don't want to see your mother naked or your father poor, in decline. There were things that you assumed, but you felt sorry, you didn't want to see it that way and you wanted to see the image of the Armenian who creates and survives. I came after the upheaval, and with my personal destiny, with my upbringing, I am from that surviving generation, before the universal retreat, flight, destruction unfolding before our eyes, I wanted to see, find, create an image that is creative, that bypasses defeat, destruction, decline.
- What, "Songless retreat?"
- Retreat with a song.
- But did you want a retreat? It seems to me that what you were looking for was not the retreat song.
- There was a retreat, whether I wanted it or not. You have lost your land, your people are disappearing before your eyes, they are leaving the Middle East, their homeland. The possibilities of the emerging homeland are diminishing, and you pursued the creative image, completeness, forgetting the vulnerable places. In this way, an inferior, slightly biased, incomplete...
- Maybe insincere. A bit of "mindful" literature.
- Just so that there would be no national nihilism. It was an imposed thing, the entire Soviet literature was full of it, to cover each other's flaws: a Kyrgyz is a tall person, a Georgian is a tall person, a Russian is a tall person, we hid our bad and weak sides from each other, and that was the ideology of the party.
- It seems to me that at least you were not hiding it.
- Apparently, what I did was different, my aspirations were different.
- Perhaps what was done was more correct, high, real.
- Apparently, we could not be guided by ideas with the pen in our hands, the material took us behind us.
- Do you know what I remembered, there is an entry in Michelangelo's diary: all kinds of ideas are glorious, but when you pick up a hammer and do something, then the thinker is the hammer, and something was created, even if you give in to your idea a thousand times for your eyes, the perfect thing is what you created.
- It really is. There is. Those things that are done as intended are really hard. We are possessed by matter, we do the will of matter.
- Is it not possible for the element of matter to fail creativity?
- Do you mean Faulkner - failure, failure again, failure again - every time he went for broad coverage? Hemingway was criticized for being cautious, doing what he wanted.
- Or what he knows?
- What he wants and what he knows.
- You take as much as possible from the voluminous, big, incomprehensible, changing reality. You take it and you can't complete it, and that's the failure that Faulkner considered the greatest success.
- They say that art is in decline, there is no art, and they say that it is quite the opposite, that art is now just beginning. In your speech, those tones were also heard. In your opinion, what is the state of art now?
- So many papers have been written and so much is being written, but, nevertheless, literature is just finding itself. So little has been found, at least for those who understand, that all that has been done can only be considered a beginning. Real literature is just about to be found. I do not believe in the myths of the decline of literature. I don't believe that we are losing readers, five or three out of a hundred have always been and always will be, they will demand literature, their writer will always emerge, they will always preserve the core of literature, the core that is the union of "Haji Murad", Tumanyan "Yeghervi", "Shavarshi" from Charents, "Tigranuhu" from Baku. These are manuscripts for literature, steady, woven from genius nerves.
- "Art for art's sake". Is there such a principle, pure art? How real are these concepts for you?
- When art is for art's sake, only then does it become for man. Art is made for art's sake, when it does not fulfill an order, it gives an ideal, it enriches the society, it becomes a symbol of perfection.
- Thank you so much for your answer.
- Look at the example of Charents, when he tried to stylize and write for the party, he was a genius, you can consider those works saved. If someone else attacks, I will defend those works, but it was not the real, great literature, but that which was created only for itself, "To the Liver Masis" - art for art's sake, for literature's sake. The styling was glorious, wasn't it...
- "Kapkaz Tamasha", the elaboration of the epic, the Lenin series. You know how much I love Romance Unser. It's meanness, it's disgusting, but it's a wonderful meanness: you feel that there's power, there's Charentz, it's not "knife open". Maybe that was the victory of the element of matter.
- That sharp attitude was necessary at the time...
- "He will come, he will lie down, I will come closer, as if they would give me Haykooppai." It's disgusting, isn't it? But it envelops you, pulls you, you live with that disgust...
- ...If we consider the narrative created by mediocrity, which is behind his attitude, a slimy literature against which Charents fought.
- Charents remains the Charents that gave perhaps the most powerful description of the woman in Armenian literature, "Cold sisters in museums". Do you remember?
- I like "Elegy".
Look at the country, Italy.
And Venice, and gondolas...
Our poet used to walk there
Dreamy with its graceful step.
Isahakyan is accurately characterized, what was said by Isahakyan's mouth is a prophecy - your revolution will disappear, your revolution is a delusion...
- I don't know, it seems to me that Charents is a terrible topic that you will neither reach nor leave.
- And you imagine a culture whose Charents are very large, but everyday for themselves and constantly pose such sharp problems and provide a constant level of literature. It was not possible for us. who tried to climb up, hit the province on the head.
- In all spheres of our life, as far as I see, feel, think, provincialism has cursed us all. And the reason for the awfulness of our life in many cases is precisely that provincialism. Our dilettantism is also barely literate, we are about to resurrect Mashtots, teach the alphabet.
- That's right. It's Terus time. I spoke about it more firmly than ever, there was a platform, I could brutally hit: ignorant teachers, stupid doctors, lousy students, it is a republic of incomplete existences, a province, a triumph of poverty. There is no aspiration. The 20-22-year-old Turkish boy had boarded a bus to see Hrant Matevosyan. He was going to enter literature and had given himself a mission to find out which publication he would work for, what was around, he had reached Irkutsk, near Rasputin, he had come to Vologda, near Belov...
- Don't you think that the reason is our ambition? Do you remember Sevak's article about national arrogance?
- It was a big, necessary presence, but I attribute its charge much more to our lack of critical thinking. There were columns of essayists, evtars, herds, there were, they wrote, in hectares! And none of them saw their image in criticism. Suren Aghababyan tried to put everyone in their place... and that's it.
- He didn't put it, didn't he, until the end?
- No, perhaps. And Sevak, whose speech is half a fight, should come. If criticism had said who is this, who is that, who is the other, would have chosen the good from the bad and had not mastered the gray, Sevak would not have been such a teacher. He was a man of fine vibrations, fine perceptions, but our provincial darkness had raised him to the pulpit to teach us what to do and what not to do constantly, by deed and by direct words.
- Perhaps he was a unique combination: writer, critic, poet, reader, teacher.
- However, it was talkative, not dense and heavy, and the reason was our "being". It should be a beginning, not a graduation certificate.
- Haven't you thought how many poets Sevak has killed?
- It's not his fault, it's his grace.
- Do you remember Sevak's confession: I read Charents, I felt that I am not a poet. I stopped writing. Then I wrote again.
- It is a good example, it reminded me of nature. The fox's legs are short, the dogs will catch up with a couple of jumps, but it has a wonderful, lovely, fluffy tail and runs away with the claw of the valley. the dogs have to catch him, his tail turns to the right, the dogs fall into the ravine, the dogs growl, he runs delicately along the edge of the abyss. Sevak threw his tail into the valley and with his tail those who were supposed to be in the valley. Thank you.
- Maybe we are thankful at the moment. However, I have noticed this not only in the case of Sevak, in general, in world literature, when writers of the century or the millennium appear, a vacuum is formed around them.
- No, it's not like that, they are created to create that giant. How long "Anoush" was written, I don't know exactly the periodicals and manuscripts of the time, but what I know. once Raffi, a socio-political poem, once Proshyan, "Sos and Varditer", Mirakyan, "Lalvari vors", the version of "Anush" in 92? It is the aspiration of the people, it is the language to decide something. It's not a vacuum, it's an aspiration. "Anoush" will no longer be written. A person is a unique birth, and so is a literary work.
- It is difficult to leave literature, but I have to ask: how do you feel about the universal politicization of our life?
- It cannot be so. I treat him badly, he wears out his nerves, he kills people, he destroys business, they are engaged in this fruitless game. We are press and literature workers and we are involved in politics, but are all the people and everyone engaged in politics?
- It is an interesting question, are we so political or did we say it once and we believed it? Perhaps not, because the world hasn't come to a stage yet. However, why did you leave and why did you leave the newly elected Armenian parliament?
- I followed in the footsteps of Zoryan, Saryan, Sevak, the previous writer-deputies of the previous parliaments, who used to go and sit once or twice a year, and then return to their work. There was also the problem of ambition, I didn't know how horrible it would be! It was hard work, in the first days, in the first months, I was trying to be a real deputy, to influence the course of events, then I saw that it was either me or the parliament.
- That is, either a writer or a messenger?
- Yes, it is a very hard, very serious work, which in my case cannot be compared and combined with your work as a writer. While staying in the parliament, I could not think that I would remain a writer. There are people who can, I can't. My bread was on my desk, I was going to my bread. On the other hand, in order to have a voice in the parliament, you need to have a faction, a party and influence the formation of this or that problem with a certain number of votes, and that is organizational work, not suitable for my nature, I am not a "boy of the group", I am impersonal, I cannot negotiate and I cannot convince, it reminds me of a dispute. I feel bad when a member of the faction is on warm terms with you, but he wants to protect the interests of his party. Although I tried something, the idea of a round table, for example, or the desire to bring together opposing groups. It seemed that the contradictions are the result of misunderstanding, failure, and it is necessary to bring people together to find out.
- They wouldn't come.
- If they had not come, this tragedy would have happened, which is not someone else's, it is theirs.
- How do you feel about the latest decree of the president, I mean the suspension of Dashnaktsutyun's activities? Many people said and say that it was a move to remove the confederates from the elections. Is it so, or is it just a populist, superficial assessment?
- With that question of yours, you bring our conversation to a dead end, just as the president's decree and the activities of that party bring my work and life to a dead end, they put the problem either-or: either me - or you, or we - or you, and I am not either-or - and the party is the essential component of my national body, both the president and the state. the exclusion of one or the other from my life is my pain, for them it may be a game (political, important, profitable, distant!), for me it is death. But they must also be realizing that by alienating each other, by being alienated from each other, it is they, each of them, who is being robbed. Nationwide power cannot be squandered so ruthlessly, it cannot be. They say that we are not looting, the ruling faction says that we are not looting, the other faction also says that we are getting stronger, and maybe they really are getting stronger, but this is the stigma: "party egoism", they are a stigma on the first victim, the first republic, it is becoming a stigma on the sick body of today's republic.
But will we examine this problem, today, where? Isn't there a need for a round table - face to face, word for word, word for word...
- I don't know who should discuss before and after everything, but during discussions we all like to bring everything down to the everyday level, turn it into a normal conversation. Lord God, shouldn't there be a time when the president of the country decides something that we accept without discussion as the word of the owner of the country?
- Your words are a bit late for me, word for word, page after page, I had and expressed the same attitude. For example, it is unbearable that the president is not called Mr. President, Levon and that's it. And if a Turkish pasha or a Moscow bureaucrat were sitting on our heads, would we curse as much as we have in these two years our flesh and bones president?
- Maybe that is the reason: he was our man, where did he get to, where did we stay?
- Here, our kings did not say that we are from you, they said that we came from the world of Chenats.
- The prophet has no place in his homeland!
- I have seen many times that it should be the word, because when my mind reached a dead end, the president's decisive words were heard.
The danger of the Armenian-Armenian war, avoiding the Armenian-Azerbaijani open, demonstrative war full of unpredictable consequences...
- Your attitude to the new elections. Do you have any expectations from the newly elected parliament and what to expect?
- In my opinion, more politically mature men than the old ones will not be nominated. This parliament is capable, stable, and in the beginning there were also lovely people. Why didn't it happen? I don't know. Apparently, party egoism is a terrible force that did not allow us to understand each other. This wrangling, beating water, murderous scandal, discrediting the parliament and the parliamentary thought arose.
- Who will be like that?
- Well, if there is an absolute victory of ANM, the other parties will feel deprived and humiliated, otherwise, it will definitely be worse than this.
- Shall we dissolve the parliament?
- I once said that I want a dictatorship, I want a dictatorship that solves the issues of garbage, this eastern bazaar, this epidemic of looting, and this gassy poverty. Issue-solving dictatorship. The communists left badly, but those who came realized later what happened, they thought it was a different country. They did not see that their country was being destroyed and looted. I wondered if I would add my own to the delirium of the square, how would I be different from the bazaar... I'm not talking about it now, it's already history, past, let's not look at yesterday. Let's talk from today.
- Well, why were you silent at the writers' conference?
- The assembly tried to preserve the union, I agreed, what else could I say?
- If we consider what we have talked about as an assessment of the current state of Armenia, what will happen to us tomorrow in your opinion?
- Power and property will not be equal in this way (cursed inheritance), power will not be a guarantee of property in this way, and therefore the inter-party fights in the national struggle for survival will not take the form of wars, and may those days be blessed.
- Which color do you like the most?
- I used to like red, now I like green, light green, spring leaf green.
- Which number do you like?
- The number, the digit? Maybe 1960 or 1959.
- Your favorite song.
- "Solveig's Call" - Grieg.
- And the street?
- There is no more. Jim Torosian ate. Old Jrashati Street. It was behind the Supreme Council, at the head of Khachatur Abovyan's disappeared, lost park, it was in a big city and there was so much peace.
- How does your day start and end?
- My dream day, which never happens like that, begins with connecting with what I did yesterday, when I somehow find the line. I usually don't close the paragraph to have access for the next day. If writing works, it's life, it's scary afterwards when you don't know what to do, TV is killer, restaurants are expensive, drinks are wild, the press is gluttonous.
- Let's say you have three wishes, the departure and the place are fulfilled, which one will you choose?
- To have a Yerevan city of clean, tidy private houses.
- Why do you need such a crowded city?
- Yerevan of clean, tidy private houses and that's it. After people in that city smiled, as in the 60s and 70s, after that we became a city of angry and angry people.
- Maybe in the 60s-70s. You were young, not people were smiling.
- According to Arto Peleshyan, yes. Patience to endure, to forgive, to tolerate, to love decreases with age, but the smile has also decreased.
- I wouldn't say that you are very smiling yourself.
- I want a perfect work of art. Vigorous, shrill, wonderful life pours forth, we are bound together. I want a major literary victory. In general, a person deceives himself, even an open failure can be considered a success. Repentance, admitting a mistake is terribly difficult. I would like to have the success of standing before God alongside my predecessors and contemporaries.
- What is your attitude to the surprise?
- I don't know. Are there any surprises?
- Full!
- No. Let's find out. Were there any surprises or did you reminisce and your face stopped? No surprises.
- And it seems to me that there are.
- Are there any?
- There are. They definitely are.
- What is the purpose of your questions? What do you want?
- To see and recognize a person in a moment and in an image.
- Surprises expose a person, yes?
- In all cases, a person remains face to face with his strength, his weakness, at least not as he imagines himself, but as it is. Who are you? You and you. Who are you?
- However, I love those who create a different image of themselves and try to suppress their inner animal and become the image of their imagination. We are all teachers to each other, living in each other's rhythms, and my sympathies are with those who charge into those rhythms, even if they become quixotic. It's the characters that drive us, right?
- Interest leads.
- The Shah is also a good leader. What is guiding us today? Do you know what our main pain is today? We are not guided by our image, not by the image created by us, not by the image of our possibilities, the poor, deprived, shocked, wiped out republic, however, is guided by the image of wealth from the bottom up.
- Wealth or power?
- Both together: strong rich, rich strong.
- I would not like us to be a rich country, I would like to have a strong country.
- There is no such thing. The two are together. Leads the image of wealth. Russians are also guided by the image of a united, rich, powerful country: a single house, a family, safe children, a country house, a trip around the world in the summers: omnipotence, a superman, super rich. There, a brother can trample his brother, deny, forget. I liked this clearing very much, it is a wonderful forest, pine trees, a stream, it has only one shortcoming: there is no single house, my single house... I am building a summer house, I turn around, see that the clearing is not there, I have destroyed it.
- But it's not yours now.
- Mine was destroyed, so I missed, I brought other people's, strangers' private house here from New Jersey.
- What is yours?
- Mine will appear here. That's why I often say that we don't sing our song, we don't speak our words, we haven't found ours yet.
- Why? We are searching, can't we find it? We don't have an ideal, can't we find it? We don't know what we want, we can't find it? Why?
- The superiors imposed their image. They pushed the idol of freedom and independence from the Spartan times, they made us leaders, we gladly went after the foreign idol and in one day we renounced-forgot our relatively safe situation and found ourselves in today's world.
- Did we deny that...
- I can't forget why we destroyed the Spitak sugar factory and gave it to the Georgians, just like that, we destroyed the Alaverdu copper giant, the Russians destroyed the Kirovakan ammonia factory, and gave it to South Korea for 70 million dollars. Thus, the power of the republic was reduced to zero. In all cases, at the moment, they seemed to be justified steps, but how did it happen that we didn't stand up for ourselves - it's my factory, I'm not destroying it, my earthquake is far from my disaster.
- Do you think about death?
- When I thought about it, I was horrified. I dodge by instinct. Death is scary.
- Do you not believe in the transmigration of souls?
- It's a literary trick, a favorite fairy tale. We are all unique.
- No, why? Hasn't it happened that you passed by a tree, a stone, a person and you felt a great familiarity, very familiar and very dear, maybe the soul of someone was in that stone, that bush, that flower, that color, that voice, those eyes...
- That's great, but it...
- Is it poetry?
- No, you know there are moments like that in my unfinished work, I was seriously digging and thinking that there will be a good part in the work. Until I became so sensitive myself that I was afraid to relate to it all. I have started several such characters and left them unfinished, because I became so sensitive that I repeated such a situation, now I am careful and withdraw, because while writing I have to rule over both my characters and myself.
- And do you believe in the afterlife?
- Of course I don't believe it.
- Why, it would be very bright, natural. It may sound harsh, but faith is beneficial, because it is an opportunity for life to last.
- I believe, I caress, I love, I want to pour some work and gold dust on Stepanakert, Ghapan, Vanadzor, we would be Switzerland, we will change the gray tiles, we will become a country of red tiled roofs, parks, gardens... I believed in that.
- Don't you believe now?
- There are many moments of despair. How can we deal with this creeping pilgrimage to the "unhappy nation", today or tomorrow they will slap us in the face: where is your homeland, get lost in your country? Like it or not, we will return home.
- It turns out that you have to hit the fallen one to stand up.
- It turns out that it is worth hitting. This help is delusional. This help destroys our ability.
- It is psychological murder: long live the body with its syndrome of paralysis and beggars.
- From the beginning, I guessed that it was the word of the gentleman. you show mercy, he shows mercy, from the beginning I was disgusted with people showing mercy and showing mercy in front of temples. Maybe that's what I saw in them and not just brotherhood.
- Do you believe in God?
- Why do you ask that question?
- I want to know.
- I don't believe in God.
- Why?
- I don't believe in God. I believe in the divine abilities of my son, my daughter, you, man, there is God in each of us, I believe that.
- Then why do our deities lie, kill, humiliate, eat each other?
- From fear. From a misunderstanding.
- Why are we afraid? Why are we misunderstanding?
- We think there is a God, he will sort it out himself. If we believe in each other and not in God, everything will be fine.
- Can we be that strong?
- We definitely can.
- Where does that power come from?
- I wrote a story about a woman, she is ignorant, but the child was given a problem at school, she has to solve it, she doesn't even know the letters, she doesn't know what a pipe is, but she has to solve the problem of a pool filled with two pipes. And that woman solved the problem for her child: I see a god in that woman, an Armenian woman, and I don't need another god.
- Is a woman a strength or is a woman a weakness?
- Woman is strength, woman is life.
- Aren't strong women the weakness of men?
- That is another question.
- Your question to me.
- Your Armenian and foreign colleagues interview me, why do the Russians do well? Why is that, I am the source?
- You ask yourself a question, ask me a question.
- What do you like the most?
- Sea and summer and sun.
- Today or always?
- Always and always.
- In short, nature and freedom...
- Freedom and nature...
- It would be a wide river with green banks. that's what fed me.
- Maybe we don't leave our childhood, and that is our strength.
- Aren't we leaving?
- Are we leaving?
- Searching my memories, I have to say that I had a tremor to overcome that period, to communicate with a stranger, a pleasant tremor, however, it seems that I am on three legs and I have not cut off one of my legs from that period.
- But will you get off the ground with three legs...
It is formulated, isn't it, the eternal material of literature: there is no return home, but also, our process is a constant process towards home, towards childhood, my first work was about that and I keep seeing that same path, a constant return.
- Now where are you going back to?
- Ion Drutze (a very good writer) said during a conversation: "You know, Hrant, don't go to the village either. Let the image remain as it was, when you see this desecrated, you also desecrate your memories." This advice was so brotherly. But my country is so small that it is impossible not to set foot on the same path a second and a third time. I really want not to go back, but how?
- Where in the world do you feel the best?
- Sadly already only in front of a white page, holding on to my body, suppressing my longings.
- Aren't you afraid of the white page?
- I'm afraid.
- Do you like that page, are you fighting or calling, are you going?
- Every time I think about saving the page, about saving the case. when it comes to my head, I feel good.
- Are you saving the page or yourself?
- I am the page. We are the same. The sad thing is that I write so little that I can't throw away the beautiful excess, edit it.
- Write a lot.
- Too much is not allowed, too much, oh, I wouldn't be me.
- Did I say something very disgusting?
- Oh, we have done so little good... full of dead pages, dead books, dead words, you don't know why we wrote them, sometimes your situation is so bad that you wish you were giving in to their misery, because, naively, he thought he was doing something and wrote it, wrote it...
- Your favorite literary work.
- Why do you make such a distinction?
- I want to know. For example, Charents used to say: "My favorite song is Navzike."
- Charents was talking about his works.
- Yes, I also want to know yours.
- From my writing?
- Both yours and others.
- "Haji Murad" by Tolstoy, "Khambapet Shavarsh" by Charents, "Yegherun" by Tumanyan, "Tiflis" by Agassi Ayvazyan, "Tigranuhi" by Bakuntsi, etc. Tumanyan's entire children's work, the epic, of course, the epic, there is something so beautiful about Isahakyan in me. Don't you love it? It didn't happen, when I read his story of "Little Mher"... it's such a luxury, encyclopedic, you have to gather all the Armenian intelligentsia to be able to give you so many words and languages, ethnohistory, ethnography... it's such a wide and deep knowledge... In general, that generation of the nation's revival period was wonderful. Tumanyan, Isahakyan, Teryan, Charents...
- It was Europe, excluding Tumanyan, it was Europe. Tumanyan was also from the East.
- Tumanyan was not captured - he remained in the East, in some of Isahakyan's works the East remains the East, Tumanyan elevated the East to the sphere where there are no East and West, they are not opposed, they are together, they are global.
- I don't know. I don't like Isahakyan, I can't accept that blood, that quality, that cut. Mine doesn't, it's good, but mine doesn't.
- You know what, it happens like that, it's a period, it will pass and you will come to Isahakyan.
- There is no district, it is a neighbor's house.
- There are unloved pages in prose.
- Also in poems.
- Especially fables, children's works are not loved either.
- There are writers, you read, and it's your house, Isahakyan has always been a neighbor's house for me, there are many good things there, but what about you, it's not you, it's your neighbor's, not yours, it's someone else's.
- To speak like that, I have to remember the time of my fresh perceptions. Once I had an argument with one of my film director friends, he said. "Television ate you up. You've watched so many movies, your taste is spoiled." It may be that I really have lost my sense of literature now.
- They also showed Henrik Malyan's films on TV. They were wonderful.
- "The Triangle". Malyan was able to have a manuscript.
- Malyan created a national film mentality. Perhaps, to some extent, Malyan created today's intelligentsia with his perception of the Motherland. I had the worship of Malyan, but also my fight with Malyan. Just the fight - I didn't want Malyan to give a fairy tale. Malyan was telling a story. The fairy tale of life: pure, bright, heavenly.
- That generalization of reality, which sees life in one layer, was present in Malyan's films.
- Socialization is in Albert Mkrtchyan's films. Glorious movies! I really like: "Tango of our childhood", "Song of the old days". They are great movies, but...
- They are works of seconded, prompted feelings, what is wonderful?
- I don't know. They are good, they are good films, especially the acting of the actors, they play divinely.
- But why don't those films become yours?
- I don't know, but those films will never give what Malyan gave. Malyan's films were familiar, he was Armenian and Armenian by birth and blood.
- There is a girl: the clothes are in the right place, the appearance is in the right place, but it's boring, so are the works of art, everything is perfect, but there is no charm, they don't create a living space.
- There is no breath of God.
- Yes, there is no breath of God. A manuscript was brought to me, written by the locksmith of the home management, the locksmith also came with a 30's cap on his head, his shoulders straight from hanging his jacket for a long time, he was very confused. The notebook was his confession and in his opinion he had done something bad, exposing his life to a stranger. He brought and gave, the next day he came and took away. It was 24 pages, illiterate, without commas. Ignorant, approximately! approximately! Somehow I guessed what he was saying, somehow. But I have never seen such charm, what a beauty it was next to our Shinovite literature.
- It is the philosophy of life.
- There was such a life, such beauty. In these poor pursuits of literature, false ideals. He came and took away what I did, what I did wrong, I said: I will print in your name, he did not agree, but everything was impressed with one reading, I can restore it line by line. Oh man, oh writer, oh teacher, teacher for us, who talk and talk, but the thing doesn't happen, the word dies, he's gone.
- Was there a question you were waiting for, but didn't hear?
- As if I didn't hear anything, as if I didn't answer anything.
- How?
- You separately, I separately, I am sure, we would have been able to prepare two very good articles, we talked now, but it did not become a text. This parasitic genre of the interview spoils the speech, so the writer and the journalist can't make an article, a body, should the question come to the rescue?
- No, why? The interview has its wonderful aspects. its genre and its style, you just have to be a master and not pressurize the interlocutor with your words, let him speak and then do not level, do not fix the speech, because the interview should have a lively speech and not remind of a scientific article or study, the interview has its own rules, and when you catch the vein of the genre, many, many depths will be opened.
- Rishina had good conversations with Likhachev and Aitmatov in a matured way. It should be beautiful, concise, precise, intelligent. That's the body, right?
- I don't know, looking at the body, what demands do you make and how do you use it?
- It is a body as a story, as a novel, it has its own rhythm. Isn't it? It has its volume, its time. When you read the first lines of the story, you know how many pages it will go.
- If the writer comes to it instinctively, the critic knows, the journalist turns around.
- The one who runs around is no longer a journalist.
This is what Hrant Matevosyan said. I don't know. Perhaps. Although maybe the journalist's job is to revolve around the events and facts and be in the center. In the center, but not the center. And maybe not. God knows. "And he went, he went, he went, he faced the wall" some line of the written or unwritten poem stubbornly stuck to my tongue and nails and would not come off. It was an irrelevant, meaningless line: "And he went-went-went, faced the wall." It was an absurd line in this case. I was good, very good, full, very full this Sunday, there was only one sin. I may have cut off Hrant Matevosyan from his white paper, but that sin was atonable, I knew, I had seen the white papers on the desk, the ready-made pens and the unfinished manuscript.
An art crisis? Stupidity! The writer writes, the non-writer falsifies. The savagery of those who declared the bankruptcy of one's own pen a global disaster... Art does not die, art is dead, humanity has nothing to do, humanity will die.
H. G.
Hrant Matevosyan does not like the question and answer game, he prefers the monologue in the interview because he has a body. I don't know if this interview had a body, but surprisingly, his best answer was to my... unasked question, and I just don't have the right not to publish this monologue from our dialogue."Our village is behind the mountains, the sound of cannons was coming from Voskepar, I didn't want to go back, the chairman of the executive committee came, we went up to the mountains. We wanted to go to the Golden Ball again, there were people who ran away from the Golden Ball. bent over, as soon as they saw us, they put the aragh aside, they kept both the drink and the food for us, they were runaways, we ate the poor people's bread, after a while our food arrived, we returned the aragh. Then the hail hit, covered everything in three minutes, we dispersed. I went to our village - the smell of my father's jacket, which I carried on my shoulders, the dog, the smell of the stove, the milk, our house... I saw that I didn't want to come to Yerevan, seven days was good for me, I found a warm place like a child in the mother's lap, I lived. That silence! I had to leave that autumn peace, I had to come, there was no car, I set off on foot... I saw the colors, the flowers for the last time that day. There were lots of pink flowers, lots of blue, lots of flowers. I was coming slowly and, Lord God, don't send a car here, don't meet a car. So I walked for seven kilometers, then a car was found, and I came to this hell. Hers said: "Don't go, what's your business, that city is not your place." He himself is a person who does not like beauty, our house was also in the forest, half of the trees in our garden were wild oaks. Hers didn't like the beauty salon, that noise, that meeting... I didn't like it either. The unfinished work I am writing, one version was called "Geghamedj". The first noise I remember, I'm in my father's arms, a line for bread, some white hat and mad noise. I'm in my father's arms and I'm very scared, from a lot of people, from the noise, from those women, men, from the noise of the street, and now I'm coming down the river, there's no car, the river is roaring, my house is here. We were going to the village. I told Saroyan. "I will stay there." He said: "Hrant! They will not leave the child." That's right, there's no going back.":
Anahit ADAMIAN
"Republic of Armenia", 11.02.1995